“Glover draws hope from the recurring breakthroughs of moral resources and from the happy episodes in which they conspired to avert disaster. During the Cuban missile crisis, Nikita Khrushchev and John F. Kennedy were reminded of the human cost of the nuclear brink they were approaching, Khrushchev by memories of two world wars fought on his soil, Kennedy by a graphic briefing of the aftermath of an atomic bomb. And each understood they were in a Hobbesian trap. Kennedy had just read Barbara Tuchman’s ”Guns of August” and saw how the leaders of great nations could sleepwalk into a pointless and awful war. Khrushchev, thinking like a game theorist, wrote to Kennedy: ”You and I should not now pull on the ends of the rope in which you have tied a knot of war, because the harder you and I pull, the tighter this knot will become. And a time may come when this knot is tied so tight that the person who tied it is no longer capable of untying it, and then the knot will have to be cut.” By identifying the trap, they could set the shared goal of escaping it. In the teeth of opposition from many of their advisers, both made concessions that may have literally saved the world.”

I believe that there is good and evil and that people make choices about how they will proceed in life. At the same time, I think we are often trapped in circumstances not of our own making, and that we are not always in control of our choices in life.

I don’t see any fatal contradiction inherent to these views. It is unlikely that existence itself could come to term without a foundation of conflict, contradiction, and competing elements. These aspects of creation echo in the decisions made by leaders in times of crisis, and in the everyday lives that you and I lead.

We can admit the reality of contradiction and conflict while at the same time choosing clear and hopeful courses of action.

We can take part in the issues of today while looking at the lessons of the past.

Comments

Nice piece Neil.
However, the president and the democrats have not STOPPED blinking since the standoff began. I think it indisputable that the repubtilians should be cast in the role of Kennedy and the president and the democrats as Kruschev.
THis whole ridiculous mess is really starting to bother me. Our government didn’t use to be like this. And there is only ONE party (if you want to call those despicable, blackhearted bastards (TM) a party) and that if the GOP and their reprehensible “Axis of Evil”, boehner, cantor and mcconnell.

According to several pundits I trust, Obama USED this “crises” to achieve his own ends – to put the Big 3 on the table – to offer them up – for votes from the middle and independents. Republicans were NOT calling for cuts to the Big 3, only Obama. If it is true, then, it is truly craven. It appears that instead of Krugman being Obama’s economic mentor, FRIEDMAN is!
“The idea that the Republicans are for the billionaires and the Democrats are for the common man is quaint but outdated. It’s more accurate to say that the Republicans are for Big Oil while the Democrats are for Big Banks. That has been the case since the modern Democratic Party was re-created by Bill Clinton and Robert Rubin.”Budgetary Deceit and America’s Decline